The Religious Beliefs of Sir Isaac Newton

From an email inquiry: I was handed some information
from a cultic faith that proclaims that Sir Isaac Newton was not
a Trinitarian, but in fact wrote in disagreement concerning the
dogma.

This is what the article claimed:

"Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), in England, rejected the
doctrine of the Trinity and wrote detailed historical and Scriptural
reasons for doing so, but he did not have these published during
his lifetime, evidently out of fear of the consequences. Sir
Isaac Newton and Henry Grew were among those who had earlier
rejected the Trinity as unscriptural."

Isaac Newton was born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, a premature
infant not expected to live. His father (of the same name) had
died just 3 months before. His mother, Hannah Ayscough Newton,
remarried when he was three, and left him with his grandmother
until her second husband died, in 1653, when Newton was 11. He
was educated at King's School, Grantham, and it was assumed he
would continue in the farming tradition of his family, but finally
his mother was convinced that he should be prepared for entry
to university, and in 1661 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge,
as a poor scholar who would have to earn his keep by doing menial
tasks for the Fellows.

Newton showed no particular promise in his early years at
Cambridge, but Isaac Barrow, who held the Lucasian chair of mathematics,
gave him much encouragement. Newton took his degree without distinction
(in 1665), and would have prepared for his MA, but in 1664 the
Great Plague broke out in London, and the university was closed
down the following year.

At home during the plague years, he studied the nature of
light and the construction of telescopes. By a variety of experiments
upon sunlight refracted through a prism, he concluded that rays
of light which differ in colour, differ also in refrangibility
- a discovery which suggested that the indistinctness of the
image formed by the object-glass of telescopes was due to the
different-coloured rays of light being brought to a focus at
different distances. He concluded (rightly for an object-glass
consisting of a single lens) that it was impossible to produce
a distinct image, and was thus led to the construction of reflecting
telescopes, perfected by William Herschel and the Earl of Rosse.
At the same time, he was working out his ideas on planetary motion.

On his return to Cambridge (1667), Newton became a Fellow
of Trinity College, and, in 1668, took his MA. In the following
year, Isaac Barrow resigned his chair in favour of his young
pupil. Newton's lecture series resulted in an essay which later
formed Book 1 of Opticks .

A falling apple had posed in Newton's mind the question of
whether the force exerted by the Earth in making the apple fall
was the same force that made the Moon "fall' towards the
Earth, and so pull it in to an elliptical orbit round the Earth.
Calculations showed him that it did, but it was not until 1684,
after an exchange of letters with Robert Hooke, that Newton was
fully in command of the dynamic principles involved. In that
same year, Edmond Halley visited Newton to try to work through
some planetary questions. To his surprise, Newton told him that
the force between Sun and planets, resulting in an elliptical
orbit, operated according to an inverse square law and that he
had proved it. He later sent a small treatise on the subject
to Halley. Halley persuaded Newton to write a book and, after
much antagonism between Newton and Hooke, who demanded credit
for discovering the inverse-square law of attraction, the book
appeared in 1687 under the title Philosophiae naturalis principia
mathematica (The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).

This important work, which had remained unpublished for years,
established Newton as the greatest of all physical scientists.
Its impact was immense. Newton had rewritten the whole science
of moving bodies. He completed what the late mediaeval physicists
had begun and Galileo had tried to bring to fruition; and his
three "laws of motion" formed the basis of all further
work.

Meanwhile, the part Newton took in defending the rights of
the university against the illegal encroachments of James II
procured him a seat in the Convention Parliament (1689--90).
In 1696 he was appointed warden of the Mint, at a time when the
government had debased the coinage, and a strong, incorruptible
man was needed to deal with counterfeiters. He became master
of the Mint from 1699, having shown himself to be a brilliant
administrator. He again sat in parliament in 1701 for his university,
and in 1704 published Opticks in English, which he had refused
to do until Hooke, his old enemy, was dead.

Much of Newton's life was spent in conflict with other scientists,
particularly Hooke, Leibnitz, and Flamsteed, and he sought revenge
for slights real or imagined by deleting references to their
help from his work. He always took criticism very badly, responding
furiously - an anxiety which has often been explained in terms
of his abandonment as a child - and showed signs all through
his life of a persecution mania. A breakdown in 1693 heralded
the end of his scientific work. Knighted in 1705, his last years
were spent under the care of his niece. He never married, but
was at his happiest in the role of patron to younger scientists
and, from 1703, as a tyrannical president of the Royal Society.

===================

My question is simply thus:

Was Newton a Trinitarian, or was he one that denounced the
dogma but yet attended a learning facility that bore the name
of the very dogma that he supposedly denounced?

Thanking you in advance God bless you richly, Mark

===================

I believe he right out to lunch concerning Christian doctrine,
sorry but without a library here I can't back it up with references.
More recent thinking (I've heard) is that in his later years he
was suffering from poisoning, I'm not sure exactly what from,
but I've heard that alabaster was used a lot in cosmetics, etc.,
and that many historical figures were likewise being slowly poisoned.

Its worth looking into, but I'm persuaded that he was estranged
from any form of Christianity as we understand it.

Ron

====================

Dr. Thomas G. Barnes, in his book "Science and Biblical
Faith," 1993, (distributed by CRS Books) has two chapters
on Newton. He says, on p. 44, "Newton was perhaps the greatest
biblical scholar of his age."

Barnes explains,

In 1669 Newton became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at
Trinity College, Cambridge, one of the most honored professorships
in the scientific world. In 1673 he was told that he must take
Holy Orders (be an ordained minister of the Church of England)
to remain at Trinity. That was in Trinity College's charter granted
by the King of England. Newton would not take those Holy Orders.
... Some of the church's thirty-nine articles of faith were not
in accord with his interpretation of the New Testament. He was
so important to Trinity that an appeal was finally granted by
the King to delete that requirement for Newton.

As I understand it, Newton's position on the doctrine of the
"trinity" was, that he would not endorse what he could
not understand. (Douglas Cox)

=====================

Friends, Here is one of two posts about Newton. He is a slippery
fish indeed, he doctored up his published works and left the real
basis of his works unknown to all but a select few, who suffered
greatly for there heretical Arianism. Others though profited by
the teachings that his disciples propagated, the Unitarians and
future enlightenment thinkers of the next century.

Harder still is it to grasp the total effect of Newton's mind
in the Arianism that he was so deeply into. One of the reasons
is that his personal papers and first drafts works still lay largely
unpublished as collections Yahuda in Jerusalem, and Keynes in
Britain.

However, Westfall, and Manuel are the most familiar with the
entirety of the manuscripts from these collections and hence their
assessment is the most concise concerning Newton. Others are beginning
to surface in published works.

In Christ, Mike

=============================

Richard H. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac
Newton, (Cambridge University Press: 1980)

From Chapter 15. Years of Decline. p.819-827:

Both the Chronology and the Observations upon the
Prophecies appeared in print after Newton's death. other theological
papers, which were also products of his old age, did not. They
provide a perspective by which we can judge the extent to which
Newton edited those which he prepared for publication. Among them
are many sheet that took up again the history of the early church.
A codicil to Catherine Conduitt's will, in which she expressed
her strong desire that Newton's theological papers be published,
mentioned "the history of the Creed or criticism of it, and
a Church History compleat..." [New College MS 361.4, f. 139.]
Although the papers mentioned above contain fragments that appear
to belong to such works, the works themselves do not appear among
the papers not accessible.. [There is one extensive batch of theological
papers, in the Bodmer Library, Geneva Switzerland, which is not
accessible.] At least ten different chapter headings of a history
of the church do survive among them, one of which is numbered
Chapter XVI. [Yahuda MS 15.7, f. 124. Other chapters titles in
Yahuda MSS 7.3m, f. 5v; 15.2, f. 23; 15.3, ff. 55, 57, 59; 15.5,
ff. 91-2.]

In so far as I can judge from the fragments, the history of
the early church underwent a change analogous to those in the
Chronology and the Observations upon the Prophecies
but less complete. Whereas Newton had once centered his attention
on the fourth century and the triumph of trinitarianism, he now
concentrated more on the earlier period of primitive Christianity
and attempted (as Catherine Conduitt's codicil suggests) to reconstruct
the creed of the early church. Perhaps we can see in the papers
the reason why her expressed desire to publish them was not carried
out. The distance between newton's religion and the established
faith of the Church of England emerges in these and allied papers
far more clearly than it did in the published works.

Among the allied papers, one of the most significant, which
exists in the multiple drafts like everything to which Newton
attached importance, bore the title "Irenicum." It was
the paper Conduitt called "his Irenicum his creed,"
which would have made revealed religion less mischievous -- that
is, it would have, had Newton worked up his courage to publish
it. [No Item among Newton's theological manuscripts suffered more
at McLachlan's hands than "Irenicum." [What he printed
form Keynes MS 3, where several drafts are collected, contains
in my opinion the least typical parts. The paper that comes closest
to capturing the sense of "Irenicum" (pp.31-5 from Keynes
MS 3, pp. 9-14) has been rearranged and distorted by the insertion
of passages from other sheets of Keynes MS 3.]

==================

Westfall is alluding to a work edited by Herbert McLachlan,
M.A., D.D., (Principal, Unitarian College, Manchester Lecturer
in Hellenistic Greek, University of Manchester): Sir Isaac
Newton: Theological Manuscripts (Liverpool, 1950). As a Unitarian,
McLachlan sees Newton as one of the originators of Unitarian thought
and values his criticisms of Newton of the trinity and the Nicean
Creed as such. More about Newton in McLachlan's view in The
Religious Opinions of Milton, Locke and Newton (Manchester
University Press, 1941). It is also possible that McLachlan views
are picked up in the Watchtower work The Proclaimers concerning
great minds that rejected the trinity and labeled it as a pagan
construct (listed along with Henry Grew on p.124-126). (Helen
Fryman)

=========Citation continues======

"Irenicum" returned to the theme of the "Origines":
"All nations were originally of one religion and this religion
consisted in the Precepts of the sons of Noah..." The principal
heads of the primitive religion were love of God and love of neighbor.
this religion descended to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses delivered
it to Israel. Pythagoras learned it in his travels and taught
it to his disciples. "This religion," Newton concluded,
"may be therefore called Moral Law of all nations."
[Keynes MS 3, p. 27.] Chapter I, "Of the Church of God, "
in his history of the early church began with the same theme.

The true religion was propagated by Noah to his posterity,
and when they revolted to ye worship of their dead Kings and Heros
and thereby denied their God and ceased to be his people, it continued
in Abraham and his posterity who revolted not. And when they began
to worship the Gods of Egypt and Syria, Moses and the Prophets
reclaimed them from time to time till they rejected the Messiah
from being their Lord, and he rejected them from being his people
and called the Gentiles, and thence forward the believers both
Jews and Gentiles became his people. [Yahuda MS 15.3, f. 57.]

To the two great commandments of the primitive religion, to
love God and to love one's neighbor, the Gospels added the further
doctrine that Jesus was the Christ foretold in prophecy. the risen
Christ appeared to his disciples and commanded them to preach
repentance and remission of sins in his name. Repentance and remission
of sins, "Irenicum" insisted, refer to transgressions
of the two basic laws, sins such as idolatry, a failure in the
love of God, and covetousness, a failure in the love of neighbor.
[Keynes MS 3, p. 1.] When Jesus was asked what was the great commandment
of the law, he answered that it was to love god, and he added
that the second commandment was to love your neighbor. "This
was the religion of the sons of Noah established by Moses and
Christ and still in force." [Keynes MS 3, pp. 5-7.]

Thus, Newton argued, we are to believe in one God and in one
Lord, Jesus Christ, who is next to him in power and glory. All
this was taught from the beginning in the primitive church. It
is what Paul called mild for babes. Those things taught after
baptism were meat for men of full age. After baptism, men were
urged to study the Scriptures, "and especially the Prophesies,"
to learn as much as they could, and they were to teach others
what they learned. Beyond the minimal requirements for baptism,
however, they were, in the primitive church, to proceed in the
spirit of charity. they were not to break communion, to excommunicate,
or to persecute over matters beyond the requirements for baptism.
To impose now any article of communion that was not such from
the beginning was to preach another gospel. To persecute the Christians
for not receiving that Gospel was to make war on Christ. [Keynes
MS 3, pp. 3,14. The second of these passages is printed (incorrectly)
in McLachlan, Theological Manuscripts, p.35. Cf. similar
passages in Yahuda MSS 7.1m, f. 2; 7.3b, f. 1.] The tow great
commandments, he insisted over and over, "always have and
always will be the duty of all nations and The coming of Jesus
Christ has made no alteration in them." As often as mankind
has turned from them, God has made a reformation -- through Noah,
Abraham, Moses, the Jewish prophets, and Jesus. Now that the gentiles
had corrupted themselves, men must expect a new reformation.

And in all the reformations of religion hitherto made the religion
in respect of God and our neighbor is one and the same religion
(barring ceremonies and forms of government which are of a changeable
nature) so that this is the oldest religion in the world... [Keynes
MS 3, p. 35.]

"These are the laws of nature," he added in another
paper, "the essential part of religion which ever was and
ever will be binding to all nations, being of an immutable eternal
nature because grounded upon immutable reason." [Yahuda MS
15.5, f. 91.]

The law was enchanter then the days of Moses [he wrote on the
back of a bill dated May 1719] being given to Noah and all his
posterity, and therefore when the Apostles and Elders in the Council
at Jerusalem declared that the Gentiles were not obliged to be
circumcised and observe the law of Moses, they expected this law
as being imposed on all nations not as the sons of Abraham [sic]
but as the sons of Noah not by circumcision by an earlier law
of God not by conversion to the Christian religion but even before
they were Christians. And of the same kind is the law of abstaining
from meats offered to Idols and from fornication, not as Christians
but as Gentiles -- as being imposed on all nations not by the
law of Moses but by an earlier law of God, not as sons of Abraham
but as sons of Noah, not as Christians but even as Gentiles. And
of the same kind is the law of abstaining from meats offered to
Idols and from fornication. [Yahuda MS 7.4, n. f.]

Newton returned to the same theme in "A short scheme of
the true Religion," in which he argued that the precepts
that fill out the command to love your neighbor were taught to
the heathens by Socrates, Cicero, Confucius, and other philosophers,
to the Israelites by Moses, and to the Christians more fully by
Christ. "Thus you see there is but one law for all nations
the law of righteousness and charity dictated to the Christians
by Christ to the Jews by Moses and to all mankind by the light
of reason and by this law all men are to be judged at the last
day." [Keynes MS 7, pp. 2-3; printed in McLachlan, Theological
Manuscripts, p. 52. Cf. a sheet with nine "Propositions":
Keynes MS 3, pp. 17-18; Theological Manuscripts, pp. 28-31.]

One cannot miss the filiation of such concepts, stemming form
the"Origines," with Newton's Arianism. In other papers
he continued to explore the nature of God and Christ and to reaffirm
in his old age the Arian stance he had taken originally in his
young manhood. Some of the fragments on the early creed contain
the most important statements of his theological position that
he ever set on paper. His research on the early church led him
to a statement of the true creed.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven
and earth and of all things visible and invisible, and in one
Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Virgin
Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was buried, the third day
rose again form the dead. He ascended into heaven and from thence
shall come to judge the quick and the dead whose kingdom shall
have no end. And I believe in the holy Ghost who spoke by the
Prophets.

Such a creed, easy to understand even to those of limited capacity,
was fit to be proposed as a statement of the first principles
of religion. It contained no theories but only practical truths
on which the whole practice of religion depended. Passages such
as this, form the time of the calculus controversy, reflected
aspects of the philosophic stance that Newton assumed vis-a-vis
Leibnitz. the primitive religion, easily understood by the meanest
people, was handed down simplicity "untill men skiled in
the learning of heathens Cabbalists and Schoolmen corrupted it
with metaphysicks, straining the scriptures from a moral to a
metaphysical sence and thereby making it unintelligible."
[Yahuda MS 15.5, f. 97v. Similar passages were very common among
the theological papers that dated from the years after 1715.]
To cap his other crimes, Leibniz repeated the intellectual stance
of the archfiend Athanasius.

Newton proceeded to explicate the meaning of his creed.

We must believe that the is the father Almighty, or first author
of all things by the almighty power of his will, that we may thank
and worship him and him alone for our being and for all the blessings
of this life... the holy invisible God and the only God whom we
are to worship and therefore we are no to worship any visible
image picture likeness or form. We are not forbidden to give the
name of Gods to Angels and Kings but we are forbidden to worship
them as Gods. "For there are Gods many and Lords many) yet
to us there is but one God the Father of whom are all things and
we in him and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things and
we by him," that is, but one God and one Lord in our worship:
"One God and one mediator between God and man the man Christ
Jesus." We are forbidden to worship two Gods but we are not
forbidden to worship one God and one Lord: One God for creating
all things and one Lord for redeeming us with his blood.

We must not pray to two Gods but we may pray to one God in
the name of one Lord... We must believe that he was crucified
being slain at the Passover as a propitiary sacrifice for us,
that in gratitude We may give him honour and glory and blessing
as the Lamb of God which was slain and hath redeemed us and washed
us from our sins in his won blood and made us Kings and Priests
unto God his Father. We must believe that he rose again from the
dead that we may expect the like resurrection and that he ascended
into heaven to prepare a place or mansion for the blessed that
by the expectation of such a glorious and incorruptible inheritance
we may endeavor to deserve it.

We must believe that he is exalted to the right hand of God
(Acts 2--) or is next in dignity to God the Father Almighty, the
first begotten the heir of all things and Lord over all the creation
next under God, and we must give him suitable worship... The worship
which we are directed in scripture to give to Jesus respects his
death and exaltation to the right hand of God and is given to
him as our Lord and King and tends to the glory of God the Father.
Should we give the father that worship which is due to the Son
we should be Partripassians, and should we give the Son all that
worship which is due to the father we should make two creators
and be guilty of polytheism and in both cases we should practically
deny the father and the Son...

We must also believe that Jesus Christ shall come to judge
the quick and the dead, that is to reign over them in justice
and judgment untill he shall subdue all rule and all authority
and power, and all enemies be put under his feet the last of which
is death, and by consequence untill all enemies be put under his
feet. And this his coming to judgement we must believe that we
may with understanding pry for the coming of his kingdom and fit
ourselves to stand before him in that day, and to deserve an early
resurrection...

[Yahuda MS 15.3, ff. 45-6. Cf. a short restatement of this
position on f. 46v. Also Yahuda MS 15.5, f. 95v, and Keynes MS
3, pp. 43, 45. This space is in the original.]

The Arian features of Newton's Christology continued to be
evident. Although we are to worship Christ as Lord, "yet
we are to do it without breaking the first commandment."
The true manhood of Christ was important to Newton, who believed
that trinitarianism effectively denied his manhood and with it
the reality of his suffering on the cross. However, "he was
not an ordinary man but incarnate by the almighty power of God
and born of a Virgin without any other father than God himself."
[Keynes MS 3, p. 45. Yahuda MS 15.3, f. 46.] That is, Newton had
reached back to the primitive church to resurrect a concept of
Christ as a human body animated by a divine or semidivine spirit.
He rejected any notion of a unity of substance between God the
Father and Christ the Son, and asserted instead what he called
a monarchical unity --

an unity of Dominion,the Son receiving all things from the
father, being subject to him, executing his will, sitting in his
throne and calling him his God, and so is but one God with the
Father as a king and his viceroy are but one king. for the word
God relates not to the metaphysical nature of God but to his dominion.

Though created by God in time, Christ existed before the world
began. As the spirit of prophecy, he was the angel of God who
appeared to Abraham, Jacob, and Moses and governed Israel in the
days of judges. After Israel rejected him and desired a king,
the angel appeared no more but rather sent his messenger to the
prophets. [Yahuda MS 15.5, f. 96]

===================

This is obviously wrong. The bible does witness to the fact
that the Angel of the LORD did in fact appear to the prophets,
Elijah, and to others after the choosing of Saul as King over
Israel through Samuel. (Helen Fryman)

============Citation continues=========

for Newton, to whom prophecy was the very essence of revelation,
the most essential thing about Christ was not his special relation
to god but his special relation to prophecy. To the original true
worship of the sons of Noah, he asserted, "Nothing more has
been added... with relation to Jesus Christ then to believe in
the predictions of the holy Ghost by the Prophets concerning him,
viz that he is the Messiah and the son of man predicted by Daniel
and ye son of God predicted by David in the 2nd Psalm, and the
Lamb of god predicted in ye Pascal Lamb by Moses, andc."
[Yahuda MS 7.3k, no. f. before f. 1.] Whenever Newton attempted
to summarize the true religion in a series of articles, a further
aspect of the special relation of Jesus to prophecy always appeared.

That all foreknowledge of things is originally in the breast
of him that sitteth upon the throne, and that the Lamb received
this prophecy from him and was the only being in heaven earth
or under the earth who was worthy to receive it from him, and
by his death obtained this worthiness...

As Newton also insisted, giving ear to the prophets is the
mark of the true church.

When Voltaire came to England in the 1720's, he interested
himself in Newton's religion as well as his philosophy. The latter
he could find in the published works. he learned what he could
about the former from newton's friends, such as Samuel Clarke.
"Newton was firmly persuaded of the Existence of a God, and
by that word he understood not only a Being infinite, omnipotent,
and eternal, who is the creator, but a master who has made a relation
between himself and his creatures..." [Voltaire, Oeuvres
completes de Voltaire (Beuchot), 72 vols. (Paris, 1834-40)
38, 11.] Clarke instructed Voltaire well. Among Newton's theological
papers, many passages emphasized the very point.

We are therefore to acknowledge one god infinite eternal omnipresent,
omniscient omnipotent, the creator of all things most wise, most
just, most good most holy: and to have no other Gods but him.
We must love him feare him honour him trust in him pray to him
give him thanks praise him hollow his name obey his commandments
and set times apart for his service as we are directed in the
third and fourth commandments. for this is the love of God that
we keep his commandments and his commandments are not grievous
1 John 5.3. These things we must do not to any mediators between
him and us but to him alone, that he may give his Angels charge
over us who being our fellow servants are pleased with the worship
which we give to their God. And this is the first and principal
part of religion. This always was and always will be the religion
of all Gods people, from the beginning to the end of the world.

[Keynes MS 7, p. 2; printed in McLachlan, Theological Manuscripts,
p. 51. Cf. Keynes MS 3, p. 35, and Yahuda MSS 15.3, f. 59; 15.5,
f. 98. The last manuscript, a theological paper, is interesting
in the virtual identity of part of it to the General Scholium
to the Principia.]

It is impossible to mistake the intense affective quality of
such passages, which one can only describe as worshipful, and
we should be rash indeed to challenge their sincerity.l The piety
they express can be found more readily in the General Scholium
to the Principia and the Queries attached to the Opticks.
Shortly after Newton's death, John Craig, in summarizing his achievement
for Conduitt, asserted that "the reason of his showing the
errors of Cartes's philosophy, was because he though it was made
on purpose to be the foundation of infidelity." [Keynes MS
132] Newton's papers form over the years support Craig's statement.
Such had been the heritage he received before his long pilgrimage
through Christianity. It has supported the picture frequently
presented of a religiously traditional Newton largely wedded to
the forms of established Protestantism. [Richard S. Brooks, "The
Relationships between Natural Philosophy Natural Theology and
Revealed Religion in the thought of Newton and Their Historiographic
Relevance" (dissertation, Northwestern University, 1976).
William H. Austin, "Isaac Newton on Science and Religion,"
Journal of the History of Ideas, 31 (1970), 521-40. Leonard
Trengrove, "Newton's Theological Views," Annals of
Science, 22 (1966), 277-94.]

Newton was a far more complex man, however, than such picture
allows. Pious he undoubtedly was, but his piety ha been stained
indelibly by the touch of cold philosophy. It is impossible to
wash the Arianism out of his religious views. Newton set out at
an early age to purge Christianity of irrationality, mystery,
and superstition, and he never turned from that path. His study
of the prophecies, the work most frequently cited in support of
a contrary interpretation of his religion, was in fact one of
the cornerstones of his program. True, he undertook to purge Christianity
in the name of Gospel purity, but in the light of the role that
Arianism played in the early church and the role that it and its
offspring played in the eighteenth century, one cannot view Newton's
Arianism in isolation from the intellectual currents of his day.

Rather we do him more justice and acknowledge anew his manifest
genius by allowing that here too he stood in the van, although
the very reform of Christianity he sought to foster was already,
in his old age, surging far beyond the limits he had envisaged.
He justified himself in terms of the Bible, but the Bible as he
understood it was far removed from the Bible of traditional belief.
Where that bible contained truths beyond reason, Newton summed
up true religion in terms that effectively dispensed with all
of revelation beyond the prophecies. Christians for centuries
had understood divine revelation in terms of a new dispensation
foretold in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New; divine
revelation as Newton understood it centered on two books, Daniel
and Revelation, which revealed the almighty dominion of God over
history as natural philosophy reveal His dominion over nature.
newton questioned the plenary inspiration of the received canon
of books, and regarded the historical books of the Old Testament
as the compilations of men. [New College MS 361.2, ff. 132-3.
Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies, pp. 4-13. Newton,
Chronology, pp. 357-8. Manuel, Newton, Historian,
pp. 59-60.]

=====================

Here is some of the most devastating critique of Newton's "God".
Cold and separated, without any real contact with us, even our
salvation is effected by a creature, only by his will.

In Christ, Mike

=======================

Richard S. Westfall Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac
Newton (Cambridge University Press: 1980)

Chapter 15. Years of Decline. p.827-830:

Though he wrote at some length about Christ, his interest largely
exhausted itself in proving that Christ was not God. His soteriology,
the focus of traditional Christian concern, was uninspired and
jejune, substituting a mere legal pact for the reconciliation
of fallen man to the majesty of God which generations of theologians
had explored. The two fundamental duties of true religion, to
love God and to love one's neighbor, seem to present the opportunity
for spiritual insight. Alas, newton sought to give them content,
he could do so only in negative terms.

We are to forsake the Devil, that is, all false God and all
manner of idolatry, this being a breach of the first and great
commandment. And we are to forsake the flesh and the world, or
as the Apostle John expresseth it, the lust of the flesh, the
lust of the eye, and the pride of life, that is, unchastity, covetousness
pride and ambition; these things being a breach of the second
of the two great commandments.

The new covenant in Christ's blood promising life renewed had
become in his hands a list of peremptory thou-shalt not's.

Somehow Newton blended this desiccated vision of Christianity
with a living faith in the almighty God which suffused his life.

We must believe that their is one God supreme Monarch that
we may fear and obey him and keep his laws and give him honour
and glory. We must believe that he is the father of whom are all
things, and that he loves his people as his children that they
may mutually love him and obey him as their father. We must believe
that he is the pantokrator Lord of all things with an irresistible
and boundless power and dominion that we may not hope to escape
if we rebel and set up other Gods or transgress the laws of his
monarchy and that we may expect great rewards if we do his will.

We must believe that he is the God of the Jews who created
the heaven and earth all things therein as is exprest in the ten
commandments that we may thank him for our being, and for all
the blessings of this life, and forbear to take his name in vain
or worship images or other Gods. We are not forbidden to give
the name of Gods to Angels or Kings, but we are forbidden to have
them as Gods in our worship. for tho there be that are called
God whether in heaven or in earth (as there are Gods many and
Lords many, yet to us there is but one God the father of whom
are all things and we in him and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom
are all things and we by him: that is, but one God and one Lord
in our worship.

[Yahuda MS 15.3, f. 46v.]

============================

If in this verse that is continually quoted by JW's and Newton
as proof that Christ is not God because he is Lord, what exactly
are "all things" that Paul is speaking of here? For
if "all things" came by God the Father, and "all
things" came through "Christ the Son, Lord" then
how is it that Christ is a "thing" a "creature"???
Denying the "all things" as it pertains to Christ is
to deny "all things" when it pertains to the Father.
hence this verse is a refutation of this Arianism, because Paul
uses the same phrase "all things" referring to created
beings of the Father and the Son. and anyway, does this mean that
God the Father is not Lord? Newton equivocates on this one too.

==============Citation continues=======

The concept of pantokrator caught Newton's imagination and
held it. The word appeared repeatedly throughout the theological
papers form his final years. Autocrat over all that is, He dictated
the form of the natural world and the course of human history.
Newton did not meet him in the intimacies of watchful providence,
a point related to his Arianism. Rather he found Him in the awful
majesty of universal immutable laws -- an austere God, one perhaps
whom only a philosopher could worship.

Very few items indicate a more personal side to Newton's religion.
One that does, a letter from Joseph Morland, a member of the Royal
Society, probably written in 1716, the year Morland died, should
not be omitted.

Sir, I have done and will do my best while I live to follow
your advice to repent and believe I pray often as I am able that
god would make me sincere and change my heart. Pray write me your
opinion whether upon the whole I may dye with comfort. This can
do you no harm written without your name. god knows I am very
low and uneasie and have but little strength.

Yours most humble servant Jos. Morland

Pray favour me with one line because when I parted I had not
your last words to me you being in hast.

Even in a rare venture in the cure of souls, it appears, Newton
could not lay aside his fear of disclosing too much.

Whereas Newton published statements of his belief in God, he
not only kept the unorthodox aspects of his religion to himself,
but he exercised some care in London to mask his heterodoxy behind
a facade of public conformity. He continued to act as a trustee
of Archbishop Tenison's chapel on Golden Square until 1722. [Cf.
Warren to Newton, 19 Dec. 1721; Corres 7, 182.] When Parliament
passed an act in 1711 to finance the construction of fifty new
churches in the expanding suburbs of London, Newton became on
of the commissioners appointed to implement Parliament's will,
and he sat on the commission until at least 1720. [Summons to
meetings of the commission in 1717 and 1720; Corres 6,
406-7; Corres 7 483-4.]

Likewise he accepted membership on the new commission to supervise
the completion of St. Paul's cathedral, and attended meetings
of it in the period 1715-21. [A record shows his attendance at
a total of twelve meetings in the period 1715-21 ("Minute
Book. H.M. Commission for Rebuilding St. paul.'s Cathedral,"
The Wren Society, 16 [1939], 33-137). there is a notice
of a meeting in New College MS 361.2, f. 77v.] In view of such
assiduous attention to the proprieties, it is not surprising that
William Stukeley, noting his care to attend Sunday services and
his well-thumbed Bible, called him, "an intire Christian"
and opined that he steady support of the Church of England was
the product of true philosophy. Stukeley also mentioned that Arians
tried to claim Newton [Stukeley, pp. 69-71.] He was probably
sincere in his vigorous denial of their claim, for Newton did
not lightly lay his soul bare.

A few did know better. In his letter to Conduitt after Newton's
death, John Craig mentioned Newton's extensive religious study
and said that he had not published his theological writings "because
they show'd that his thoughts were some times different form those
which are commonly receiv'd, which would engage him in disputes,
and this was a thing which he avoided as much as possible."
[Keynes MS 132.] Conduitt, who scarcely needed Craig's instruction
in the matter, made his reference, in the sketch of Newton's life
that he sent to Fontenelle, even more elliptical. Newton believed
firmly in revealed religion, he told Fontenelle, "but his
notion of the Xtian religion was not founded on a narrow bottom,
nor his charity and morality so scanty as to shew a coldness to
those who thought otherwise than he did in matters indifferent..."
[Keynes MS 129A, p. 22.]

A few rumors did circulate. Thomas Hearne picked one up on
1732.

Sir Isaac Newton, tho' a great Mathematician, was a man of
very little Religion, in so much that he is ranked with the Heterodox
men of the age. Nay they stick not to make him, with respect to
belief, of no better principles than Mr. Woolaston [corrected
later to Wolston], who hath written so many vile books and make
so much noise.

Andrew Michael Ramsay, who knew friends of Newton such as Fatio
and Clarke, asserted in a letter that Newton had wanted to revive
Arianism by means of his disciple Clarke, though Clarke also confessed
shortly before his death how much he regretted the publication
of his arianizing work. [Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, Observations,
and Characters, of Books and Men, ed. Samuel Singer (London,
1820), p. 379.]

Newton himself did not make Clarke's mistake. Well concealed
behind circumlocutions such as Craig's and Conduitt's, his heterodoxy
slid into virtual oblivion, not to be uncovered until the twentieth
century or to be fully revealed until the Yahuda papers became
available quite recently.

His conclusions functioned only vicariously in the religious
ferment of the eighteenth century. When Joseph Hallet, alarmed
by the spread of Arianism, published in 1735 An Address to
Conforming Arians to convince them of their hypocrisy and
to lead them to repent, he named two men as the source of the
infection, William Whiston and Samuel Clarke. [Reprinted in Thomas
Gordon, A Cordial for Low Spirits, 2 vols. (London, 1751),
2, 321-49.] Both were Newton's disciples and known as such. Later
another disciple, Hopton Haynes, would publish Unitarian tracts,
and a more aggressive Unitarian, Richard Baron, would lament that
Samuel Clarke, who had performed good work in purging Christianity
of much absurdity and rubbish, had stopped short in Arianism when
a fully rational Christianity lay only another step beyond. [In
his preface to ibid., pp. xv-xvi.] But Newton's extended quest,
barely hinted at in his published works, had to enter the stream
of religious controversy through disciples more daring than he.
he carefully laundered what he himself prepared for publication.
The rest he locked away. It is wholly unlikely that his views,
formulated a generation before similar ones became widespread,
had a significant causal role in the religious history of the
Enlightenment.

=================

Thought this might be of interest in as a background of Newton's
method and means for "deciphering" the prophetic books
of the bible.

Mike

p.s. One thing that is of interest. One of the things that
kept the Western Scholars from deciphering the Egyptian language
is the belief that the figures were symbols with mystical definitions.
However, as time progressed by the late 19th century this was
seen to be false by German Scholars who completely decoded the
temple script.

The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy: or "The Hunting
of the Greene Lyon" (Cambridge University Press: 1975)

Chapter 4. Chemistry and Alchemy at Cambridge, 106-111

The problem was the accommodation of the non-Christian learning,
then being revived, to the Christian framework of western Europe.

[ff. The following discussion adheres in a general way to D.P.
Walker, "The Prisca Theologia in France," Journal
of the Warburg and Courtaulad Institute 17 (1954), 204-59
and D.P. Walker, The Ancient Theology. Studies in Christian
Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (London:
Duckworth, 1972)]

A similar problem had followed on the heels of the flood of
translations from the Arabic in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
but Aristotle and even Averoes had proved easier to Christianize
than were the esoteric materials of the Hermetic Corpus, of Eastern
mysticism, and of the Jewish Cabbala which the Renaissance rediscovered.
Since, however, the Christian revelation had to be the touchstone
of truth, all of those fascinating new-old ideas in the esoteric
writings of antiquity had to be reconciled with Christianity or
else rejected out of hand.

Orthodox thinkers were prone to hold strictly to the Christian
revelation and discard all other formulations as false and useless,
or worse, because they came from damned pagans. But even the most
orthodox had to admit some validity to the Jewish revelation because
it was plainly from God, Who had chosen the Hebrew people as the
receptacle of His prophecies and wisdom, until in the fullness
of time the revelation of Christ should supersede the earlier
partial revelations. One must think in terms of a literal and
full belief in Holy Scripture as the revealed Word of God to comprehend
the argument at all.

=============

Here in lies the bias of the said author against the doctrine
of inspiration of the bible and also the possibility of "revealed"
religion. (Helen Fryman)

=================Citation continues========

There were other thinkers in the Renaissance, however, who
moved from a position of strict orthodoxy to a syncretic use of
Christian and non-Christian revelations, by extrapolation from
the accepted idea that the Jews had had at least a partial truth.
Some held that Gentiles as well as Jews were prepared by God for
the ultimate Christian revelation by partial revelations; others
held that Moses had had that great gift from God and that other
peoples had learned their wisdom from the Jews who were bearers
of the pure Mosaic tradition. Occasionally the discovery of partial
truths by the use of natural reason was allowed to the pagans,
but the emphasis throughout all the arguments was on revelation.

Following the syncretic thinkers a little further along their
difficult journey, it may be seen that if all true knowledge is
to be considered as stemming from an original divine revelation,
whether one or many, then all true traditions must be reconcilable
with each other. Such reconciliations presented complex problems
in interpretation for the syncretists, but they were assisted
in their efforts by two attitudes which had long been adopted
in Biblical exegesis.

One was the realization that parts of the Bible had to be interpreted
allegorically if they were ever to be reconciled with orthodox
Christian doctrine. For example, if the Christian doctrine of
the Trinity be true, then the Old Testament must also bear witness
to the truth. Thus the ancient Hebrew invocation, "Hear,
O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord", received a tortious
Trinitarian interpretation. In like manner it was said that Solomon's
Song of Songs must be about Divine Love rather than about a very
human and sensual love.

==============

My Note: The author is obviously ignorant of the fact that
Moses Maimonides changed a word in this schema from "echad"
to "yachid" because the verse itself give a picture
of a God who is one and yet had diversity within him. Likewise
the Zohar, oral tradition of the 2nd Century AD of the Jews (Cabbalists)
interprets this verse as being of the three in one, God the Father,
God the Son: Messiah, and God the Holy Spirit. As Quoted in Rabbi
(converted) Cohen's work "Trinity in the Old Testament".
Likewise the Angel of the LORD is called God and Jehovah as well.
Many Church Father taught that this "angel" (which merely
means messenger in the Hebrew, not denoting a nature of the sender)
was in fact the Son in the OT. Witness to this can be given in
the verses attributed to Christs coming in Malachi 3.1, and Hebrews
11, as well as I Cor 10, where ancient manuscripts read "as
they tempted Christ" in the desert. This is just the tip
of the ice berg on this issue. Reference: Borland, Christ in
the OT for a full treatment.

Any good commentary will tell you that Song of Songs, in the
history of the interpretation of the church was seen as the church
and Christ because of the sensuality of the book, since ascetic
practices were elevated against the clear teaching about the sanction
of sex in marriage. In the 4th century when this was occurring,
the allegory of Augustine and Origen of the OT, celibacy and the
beginnings of the priesthood and Mariology was just beginning.
Jerome was attempting to defend the claim that Mary was a virgin
for her entire life even after the birth of Christ against Gnostic
claims of her infidelity in the conception of Jesus and comparison
of her to other pagan goddesses and their progeny.

In the history of the church the two types of interpretations
have little to do with each other. Allegory in the Song of Songs,
as Christ and the church to avoid the sensuality issue, because
of ascetic bias against sex, is completely different and unrelated
motivation from the textual reasons for reading the schema as
diversity in the Godhead of the OT. See Genesis 1,26,27 for starters.
(Helen Fryman)

============Citation Continues=========

There was in addition a belief anciently and widely held that
many mysteries, religious and other, had been deliberately disguised
or hidden by initiates so that the secrets could be guarded form
minds not fit to receive them. One needed only to point to Christ'
use of parables to find Christian justification for that belief,
and it could then be extended to cover all sorts of veiled esoteric
literature and even to account for certain sects of supposed wise
men who had left no writings but had relied on oral traditions
to convey their knowledge to initiates.

Armed with those two approaches, the Renaissance syncretists
might readily transform the Greek pantheon into one god with may
names, claim that Hermes and Zoroaster had acquired the original
revelation of Moses by oral tradition, or find every new scientific
discovery hidden in the fables and myths of the ancients. For
Henry More [Newton's mentor and tutor at Cambridge, Platonist
and Unitarian] to claim that the Gymnosophists of ancient Egypt
-- who left no writings -- had held to a belief in the pre-existence
of souls, or for Charleton [?] to find arguments for the unity
of the world in so many and varied philosophers, show how far
the arguments had been carried by the middle of the seventeenth
century.

Henry More evidently gave great weight to the theory that the
original revelation had been given to Moses, as he called Moses
"the greatest Philosopher certainly that ever was in the
world." Similarly Newton later tended to emphasize the importance
of the Hebraic transmission of God's Word, for, he thought that
the Brachmans of India had learned their religion, albeit in a
corrupted form, from the "Abrahamans", or the sons of
Abraham, from which he thought the name "Brachman" derived.
[Isaac Newton, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended.
To which is Prefix'd, A Short Chronicle form the First Memory
of Things in Europe, to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the
Great (London: Printed for J. Tonson in the Strand,
and J. Osborn and T. Longman in Pater-noster Row, 1728),
p. 351.]

For the purposes of the present study, however, Newton's exact
belief in possible lines of transmission of ancient secrets is
less important than his ready acceptance of other aspects of the
doctrine of "prisca sapientia", the belief that the
ancients had veiled their deepest knowledge in myths and fables
or in deliberately obscure language. Studies on widely separated
aspects of Newton's total work have demonstrated his lasting commitment
to that view.

Newton understood original true religion to have been vested
in certain of the patriarchs and in Christ, as has already been
noted in Chapter 1. To Newton it seemed that the religious revelation
granted to those figures had been clearly conveyed and required
no particular interpretation, only care that it not be diminished
by later corruptions. Not so with Biblical prophecies, however,
for there the language was "mystical" and required careful
treatment. Newton set out his technique for interpreting prophecies
in detail in one of his theological manuscripts, published in
part by McLachlan, and since it was a technique he used across
the whole range of his studies, with only minor variations, an
extensive excerpt from that manuscript on "The Language of
the Prophets" will be given here. The rational matter-of-factness
of Newton's approach should be noted, as well as his willingness
to draw upon the several techniques of textual comparisons, cross-comparison
to other systems of mystical interpretation, and comparisons of
the prophetic language with the natural world in which it was
founded by "analogy."

He that would understand a book written in a strange language
must first learn the language... Such a language was that wherein
the Prophets wrote, and the want of sufficient skill in that language
is the main reason why they are so little understood. John did
not write in one language, Daniel in another, Isaiah in a third
and the rest in others peculiar to themselves, but they all write
in one and the same mystical language... The Rule [for fixing
the signification of the Prophet's types and phrases] I have followed
has been to compare the several mystical places of scripture where
the same prophetic phrase or type is used, and to fix such a signification
to that phrase as agrees best with all places: and, if more significations
than one be necessary, to note the circumstances by which it may
be known in what signification the phrase is taken in any place:
and, when I had found the necessary signification, to reject all
others as the offspring of luxuriant fancey, for no more significations
are to be admitted for true ones than can be proved.

And as Critics for understanding the Hebrew consult also other
oriental languages of the same root; so I have not feared sometimes
to call in to my assistance the Eastern expositors of their mystical
writers (I mean the Chaldee Paraphrast and the Interpreters of
dreams)... For the language of the Prophets, being Hieroglyphical,
had affinity with that of the Egyptian priest and Eastern wise
men, and therefore was anciently much better understood in the
East than it is now in the West. I received also much light in
this search by the analogy between the world natural and the world
politic. For the mystical language was founded in this analogy,
and will be best understood by considering its original.

Following his rules of operation, Newton gave several examples
of his work in which the "mystical" language of the
Prophets is reduced to historical or political terminology, as
for example a new moon signifying a people's return from dispersal.
In his historical works also Newton moved from the esoteric to
the commonsensical, and in his hands complex mythologies were
transformed into prosaic prehistory, for he understood the gods
to represent divinized kings and the myths themselves to encapsulate
real datable events. Eventually he was to work out a fixed date
for the expedition of the Argonauts and to offer a revised chronology
of the ancient kingdoms based on it. His method involved a complete
euhemeristic interpretation of the mythological figures of the
constellations to arrive at a catalogue of the fixed stars as
they had appeared to the ancients, and then calculations of the
subsequent precession of the equinoxes to fix the date. [Frank
E. Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian (1, n. 13)]

Newton considered his work in these areas to be fully as scientific
as his work in optics and astronomy. Indeed his methodology was
quite as rigorous and rational in his studies of the esoteric
language systems of prophecy and myth as it was in his studies
of the natural world, and one need only question his basic assumption,
i.e., that real truths were embodied in myths, fables, and prophecies.
But for Newton that assumption was not questionable because it
stemmed from his belief in the "prisca sapientia", the
ancient wisdom granted by God to mankind through revelation. That
wisdom was hidden in the esoteric language of the ancients and
could be recaptured by rational methods, and any knowledge discovered
by other methods -- as by the experimentation, induction, and
mathematizing he applied in natural philosophy -- could always
be reconciled with the old knowledge occultly preserved. Further
more, Newton certainly thought there could be interaction between
the two approaches to knowledge, that the one validated the other,
and that the one approach might give clues for interpretation
in the other.

The paper by McGuire and Rattansi noted in Chapter 3 has shown
how Newton utilized this double approach in certain draft Scholia
and draft Queries which he at one time intended to include in
revised editions of the Principia and the Opticks.
[ff. McGuire and Rattansi, "Newton and the Pipes of Pan,"
(3, n. 159).] There it appears that Newton had decided that some
discoveries of Pythagoras on musical harmonies had been applied
by that famous ancient to celestial relationships, and that Pythagoras
had as a consequence of that application recognized the inverse
square law, of gravity, the "true harmony of the heavens."
Pythagoras had hidden knowledge in parables to keep it from the
vulgar, but the knowledge was nevertheless kept alive in the myths
which dealt with the musical instruments of the gods -- the Pipes
of Pan and Apollo's Harp. But-- and this is the crucial point
-- Newton also took his reasoning back in the other direction,
and from the myths which he had interpreted in the light of his
own scientific discoveries, he ventured to suggest that the ancients
had thought God was the direct cause of gravity. The conclusion
Newton drew from his interpretations of the myths then undoubtedly
influenced his scientific thinking in its turn.

By what means do bodies act on one another at a distance? The
ancient Philosophers who held Atoms and Vacuum attributed gravity
to atoms without telling us the means unless in figures: as by
calling God Harmony representing him and matter by the God Pan
and his Pipe...Whence it seems to have been an ancient opinion
that matter depends upon a Deity for its laws of motions as well
as for its existence.

It has seemed well to dwell at such length at this point upon
Newton's early introduction to the "prisca sapientia"
tradition through his reading of Henry More [Immortality of
the Soul (London: 1659)] and others because that tradition
played such an enormous role in Newton's study of alchemy that
any real understanding of Newton's alchemy is precluded if his
adherence of the "prisca sapientia" doctrine is ignored.
As will be explained in the next chapter, Newton applied his rules
for understanding strange languages to the language of alchemy
just as he did to the language of prophecy. He took certain myths
to be the bearers of alchemical secrets and on occasion allowed
the story line of the myth to determine his experimental procedure.
Moreover, the fact that Newton believed so strongly in the notions
that the ancients had deliberately hidden their secrets in the
esoteric languages explains why he so often seems to have chosen
some of the most obscure alchemical literature and terminology
for study -- no doubt he thought the choicest secrets were concealed
there.